Hey,
I started a QB team at my high school back in December. I actually started it as a student, so not only am I the club president but I'm also the de facto coach and run all operations.
Of course, the very first thing you do is to make an official club for the school. At my school there's a specific process to go through to get a club approved, and that may or may not be the case with yours. Granted, you'll only have to take care of that at the beginning of next year.
Contacts: NAQT is willing to supply a list of established teams in your area. Also, if you know of any schools with QB teams in the area, shooting them an email to ask for a contact list is usually pretty effective.
Tournaments: All NAQT-related tournaments are posted here (
http://www.naqt.com/schedule.jsp?hs=yes). Seeing as you're in North Carolina, this thread will be of good use (
viewtopic.php?f=50&t=13137). Of course, these will be available in the next academic year when you're ready to attend tournaments.
Question Sets: As previous posters have already pointed out, the packet archives and the sample question page on the HSAPQ website are extremely useful. If you're willing to spend some money, NAQT's past questions depict a reasonable difficulty level for what can be expected at their tournaments.
Funding: Like the vast majority of school activities, quizbowl does have costs involved. In my experience, the club didn't spend anymore than $250 this year, which compared to other activities isn't too much. If you have a well-funded PTO or if the county can help cover funds then that will work. Otherwise hosting some fundraisers will do fine. Also, tournament hosts are usually willing to provide discounts for your team if you tell them that you're brand new.
I remember that I started out with an informational meeting for anyone who was interested, and that cleared up any misconceptions about what quizbowl was. After that, we played quizbowl matches every meeting with the lockout system, which is the best way to get match/tournament experience (aside from attending actual tournaments, of course). Sometimes we'd also spice it up by playing
Jeopardy! or having an in-club solo competition.
Wow, sorry about writing such a long post. If you have any further questions, don't hesitate to contact me. I can also provide the informational meeting content if desired.
